Taurus Service, Inc/ Affiliated
Sires now offers four
sires from this dynamic and different breed that has become an international
success story for their ability to remain productive and healthy no matter what
environment, from the tropics to the mountains. Second in numbers only to Holsteins in
their native Austria, Bavaria/Germany
and Switzerland, they offer “vigor” both in heterosis response and gene traits.
Unlike most Euro Red breeds introduced
earlier, where there seems to be only one prevalent phenotypic pattern, Fleckveih
come in a full range of mating applications:
76FV147 Rotax aAa 513, 76FV647 Hades aAa 462, 76FV845 Rorb
aAa 435,
80FV7610 Taurus aAa
432.
Perhaps the most successful example of
“dual purpose” selection, where both milk volume from cows and beef yield from
steers is competitive with breeds more specialized for milk or beef. If you are an organic producer seeking a
breed that can perform on a high forage, low grain ration, try Fleckveih.
“So what is the big
deal?” Advertisement in
the December 2013 “Cattle Connection”
Stardell Farms, Inc is owned by Hadwen
Kleiss and his family. Mr Kleiss
sold his first “proven” bull to AI in
1958 (Wis Supreme Crusader, Curtiss)
and three decades later (after growing
from 35 to 250 cows) he came with
Stardell Valiant Winken and Stardell
Chief Adan who were as successful in
the modern “PTA” era—examples of his
understanding of the art as well as
the science of selective breeding.
Among Hadwen’s earlier “Cattle Connection”
observations were that black
hooves meant more resistance to
problems like heel warts, while Holsteins
had bred that out of the breed from
color restrictions and linear trait “sharp”
quality preferences.
Now he is observing in his herd the inconsistency
in young, higher genetic
Merit cows between their Genomic
valuation and their actual performance.
At 80 years of age, Hadwen is no
longer concerned with “follow the leader”
and can resist peer pressure to accept
every new technology without a first
testing in “real world”
conditions—typical of the successful entrepeneur.
Why is this Stardell
advertisement relevant to your approach to genetic selection and mating?
Pretty simply, he has demonstrated an ET flush in which
the heifer with the lowest Genomic value ends up the best producing and best
type young cow while the highest Genomic value heifer proves to not be
adaptable to a 250 cow free stall and parlor environment (also raising 2000+
replacement heifers to sell).
So what? You say—except
the way in which the AI industry is using Genomics is to only keep the high
one, and to reject the rest. If these
three heifers had been AI bulls, the worst performing one goes into AI and the
potentially best performing goes to beef, trusting a value imputation that is
only 65% Rel.
Much is made of the 40% market
acceptance of Genomic sires as if they were “proven” equivalent to the
sires who have survived the progeny evaluation screenings. I would suggest that after five years, 60%
of the Holstein and Jersey semen sold is still from progeny evaluated sires. Genomics is the theoretical state of the
art in genetic technology, but dairymen who dislike 40% culling rates continue
to ask for “progeny tested” sires.
The entire basis of Genomics is not
the DNA—it is the theory of accelerating generations which is dominating the
interpretation of the DNA. We
take bulls resulting from mating the “best” bulls to the “best” cows (on a
selection index ranking, not on actual realized productivity) and select the
bulls and heifers with the “ideal” gene marker possession, we mate them as soon
as pubescent, we rush the resulting heifers into IVF and bulls into semen
collection, we mate them in turn. We
are now “two generations ahead of the cow population” therefore all must be a
“base change” ahead of the progeny tested sires. We assign TPI or LPI or $NM or JPI numbers
accordingly—before anything calved.
In fact, what the realized data has
consistently told us is that the highest G value sires are 200 TPI points
overestimated on the average.
Thus today’s better “proven” sires are still highly valuable.
No comments:
Post a Comment